When to give up on a website with a Google penalty?

[tadden]

I recently had a Google 60 penalty hit my website. The main two issues were that I had a person helping me with SEO and they bought some links. The second issue is that I own about 90 URL's in the my vertical. I created about 60 one page sites for these keyword targeted domains. I then linked these sites to main site. Big mistake! I kept these URL's all on the same server as my main site. In October 2010 I noticed my site hits dropped dramatically. I started looking for the issue. I didn't know which issue caused the penalty.

I fixed both issues in November 2010 and asked Google for reconsideration in early December 2010. I kept link building for my site by finding quality links.I was extremely honest with Google. I gave them all of the domains I own and I told them the name of the person that bought links for me and the websites where those links were placed. As of late February 2011 a Google search for my domain still showed up in approximately the 64th position.

I recently asked Google again to lift the penalty. I basically told them that I fixed all of my issues that led to the penalty and let them know I have been waiting for almost 3 months. I told them I have put the past 2 years of my life into this website and begged them to forgive me. I also asked them to let me know if my site was never going to be forgiven? I got the typical canned response from the Google team.

As of today the penalty is still in effect. I just want to know when you should give up on a site. I have spent about $20,000 on this site and about 2 years of hard work. I don't want to give up, but I don't want to keep putting my hard work and time into the site if it will never escape the dreaded Google penalty.

Do you think I should continue to wait and if so how long? Anything else I can do to persuade Google to release me from this penalty hell?

If I do abandon the site and start from scratch what steps should I take? Do I need a new server? What if any content can I take from my current site and transfer to the new site? If I can how do I do this without getting another penalty or lose the credit for the original content. I created about 2,000 pages of original content for this site. I'd love to be able to transfer this content if I have to start from scratch. Any ideas or detailed help plans would be greatly appreciated.

[Branden_S]

When all else fails, use the disavow tool

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-disavow-tool-take-a-deep-breath

[komeksimas]

Hello,

I have been encouraged and accidentally engaged in some black hat like you did.

Could you inform did you solved your problem?

Thank you.

[KeriMorgret]

Hi! We're going through some of the older unanswered questions and seeing if people still have questions or if they've gone ahead and implemented something and have any lessons to share with us. Can you give an update, or mark your question as answered? I'm interested in finding out what happened to your site.

Thanks!

[Goetzman]

Post on the Google forums for help if you haven't yet.

[wissamdandan]

Hi Todd,

first we dont know what is the exact penalty, but it seems to me that is an algorithmic penalty.

Just for your information concerning filing a reconsideration request, Google will only look(or react) at it if your site got affected  by a manual penalty.

If your site was affected by an Algorithm then they will leave it for the algorithm to resolve it.

Ref (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES01L4xjSXE)